Paragraph character in URL?

Question

I just ran across this an Google App Engine article that uses that funny backwards \'P\' character in some URL\'s (look near the top of the first code box). You know that charac

Answer 1

What happens is that the page contains the sequence &para some browsers (Chrome at least) interpret that as if it was ¶ the escape code for the symbol ¶. Funny browser behaviour, but the page should not have contained raw ampersands.

Answer 2

My shot... rendering bug.
IE - shows it
Chrome - Shows it
FireFox - Displays the correct & symbol (used in URLS+parameters)

Checked source with the 3 browsers, and they all show the & char.

Answer 3

Escaping everything properly and dealing with divergent browser behavior is a pain: Accidental HTML entities in urls.

The odd thing in this case is that &param should not be recognized by the browser as &para and then m.

Answer 4

&para is in the URL which forms part of the html escape sequence ¶, i.e. ¶. It is odd browser behavior that, given the escape sequence is not complete (missing ;), Chrome is still rendering the symbol. The escape sequence itself has just not been escaped correctly in the snippet I believe..